concealed in every place huge masses of silver, copper and iron,
and has bestowed upon you the means of discovering them, placing
upon the surface of the earth signs of the treasures hidden below;
and yet do you say that you have received no benefit? If a house
were given you, bright with marble, its roof beautifully painted
with colours and gilding, you would call it no small benefit. God
has built for you a huge mansion that fears no fire or ruin, in
which you see no flimsy veneers, thinner than the very saw with
which they are cut, but vast blocks of most precious stone, all
composed of those various and different substances whose paltriest
fragments you admire so much; he has built a roof which glitters in
one fashion by day, and in another by night; and yet do you say
that you have received no benefit? When you so greatly prize what
you possess, do you act the part of an ungrateful man, and think
that there is no one to whom you are indebted for them? Whence
comes the breath which you draw? the light by which you arrange and
perform all the actions of your life? the blood by whose
circulation your vital warmth is maintained? those meats which
excite your palate by their delicate flavour after your hunger is
appeased? those provocatives which rouse you when wearied with
pleasure? that repose in which you are rotting and mouldering? Will
you not, if you are grateful, say--

"'Tis to a god that this repose I owe,
For him I worship, as a god below.
Oft on his altar shall my firstlings bleed,
See, by his bounty here with rustic reed
I play the airs I love the livelong day,
The while my oxen round about me stray."